Alcatel-Lucent Boosts Broadband Over Copper To 300Mbps

alphadogg writes "Alcatel-Lucent has come up with a way to move data at 300Mbps over copper lines. So far the results have only been reproduced in a lab environment — real products and services won't be available for at least a year. From the article: 'Researchers at the company's Bell Labs demonstrated the 300Mbps technology over a distance of 400 meters using VDSL2 (Very high bitrate Digital Subscriber Line), according to Stefaan Vanhastel, director of product marketing at Alcatel-Lucent Wireline Networks. The test showed that it can also do 100Mbps over a distance of 1,000 meters, he said. Currently, copper is the most common broadband medium. About 65 percent of subscribers have a broadband connection that's based on DSL, compared to 20 percent for cable and 12 percent for fiber, according to market research company Point Topic. Today, the average advertised DSL speeds for residential users vary between 9.2 Mbps and 1.9Mbps in various parts of the world, Point Topic said.'"

VDSL2

[sopssa]

It looks like they doubled the speed at 1km.

VDSL2 deteriorates quickly from a theoretical maximum of 250 Mbit/s at 'source' to 100 Mbit/s at 0.5 km (1640 ft) and 50 Mbit/s at 1 km (3280 ft), but degrades at a much slower rate from there, and still outperforms VDSL. Starting from 1.6 km (1 mile) its performance is equal to ADSL2+.

I have tried to get a VDSL2 for a few times during the past 5 years, but the prices are high and availability really bad. Even 100 Mbit/s fiber is a lot more common. ISP's also always responded that I live too far away from the center, even while it really was only about 1-1.5km (but that would had got me "just" 50 Mbit/s anyway, now with this 100 Mbit/s)

The nice thing about VDSL2 is that unlike ADSL, it's symmetric. The 300Mbps over a distance of 400 meters is damn good too, but theres no centers in every corner.

Great news but...

[ls671]

This is great news but I would like to note that:

1) Japan was offering DSL speeds of 60 Mbps back in 2007:

http://www.yugatech.com/blog/telecoms/japans-leads-in-internet-speeds/ [yugatech.com]

And according to TFA:

2) The speed drops to 100Mbps at a 1 km distance.

3) TFA also states "over two copper lines". It sounds like 4 wires are required (1 line=2 wire). If this is indeed the case, might as well bring the fiber into the house instead of a second pair of copper wires ;-))

Re:VDSL2

[afidel]

Yes there are, AT&T U-Verse is typically done over distances between 400m-1km (the max distance for availability is 2500ft or 762m)

1 KM really does not exist.

[Eravnrekaree]

They so often say you need to be 1 km from the CO. But a loop extender or node can be used to extend it to areas far beyond 1 km distance, in fact, to extend service many, many miles away, even dozens, basically which rejuvenates the signal, and possibly connects to a fiber trunk, although electronics can probably be developed to regenerate the signal even over a very long copper run, which is made even easier with the digital signal. The investment in that is far less than laying all new cable. It requires perhaps some electronic equipment every mile or so. This would, it is often forgotten, cut down on the cost needed to extend broadband to remote areas. It is probably the cheapest way to do it as much of the infrastructure can be reused. Its much better than the insane and crazy idea of BPL which is unfeasible and has so many more technical problems (RFI).

Re:VDSL2

[Kirijini]

Net Neutrality? [wikipedia.org] You mean, Open Access. [wikipedia.org]

Network neutrality means ISPs being neutral about the content flowing through their pipes. Open access means owners of the pipes allowing others to provide internet service on that infrastructure for a fee.

But man, what an idea... imagine a world where the pipe owners competed for ISPs as customers, and ISPs competed for subscribers...

Re:Great news but...

[NoMaster]

However, standard practice here in Australia, as required by telecommunication's law is actually 2 pairs. Red & Black and Green & Black I think. Never was a techie, just did line programming & cable records.

I was a techie (exchange mtce), then got suckered into liney-land via DSL installs / faults.

2 pairs - White & Blue, Red & Black (mostly) - but that's only for the lead-in from the pit to the NBP (first socket / external J-box), or maybe from the building MDF or IDFs to the unit/townhouse. In theory, internal stuff should be at least 2pr, but you've gotta remember 90+% of it these days is installed by builders (i.e. as cheaply as possible) & signed off by their pet electricians, so that's not a given. Plenty of single-pair in internal cabling, although that's rapidly being superseded by CAT-5 - which they usually manage to put a staple through, crush under sheeting, or just plain stretch so you're *lucky* to get a single pair that works...

(Seriously - I've forgotten how many brand-spankin'-new installs I'd attended where I had to split all 4 pairs differently around the house just to get a single line to all points.)

And let's not talk about the so-called "technician" contractors Telstra passes the lead-in installs & replacements to. I've seen lead-in buried solid (with just short lengths of conduit at the building and pit end end so it passes inspection), and CAT-5 lead-in that's such crap it's gone low IR 40 minutes after getting damp...

Besides, as a cable assigner you'd know the real problem is the lack of free/working pairs in the mains to the pillar, or especially the O-side street cabling. A 2pr lead-in is fine, but there's nowhere near enough capacity to extend 2 pairs for more than a few people all the way back to the pillar, let alone the exchange or local cabinet...

Re:VDSL2

[umghhh]

I am an ignorant in these matters I admit but to me it seems there are situations in which either there is no competition (high barriers to entry) or ones where competitors exist but they do not have to compete because change between them is impossible, cumbersome or made so expensive that such change is not feasible. Some of those situations are called natural monopolies. Of course free market freaks (FMF) would not accept even that such term describes existing situation but closer look at the reality proves that they do exist, do well and make people suffer high prices if not worse. Even bigger anathema to FMF is the way to help customers in such situations which include market regulation and in some case 'socialism' of (usually local) government providing the service itself. It works for water companies where there is not a single proof that privatization without regulation actually works and provides better service. In my view it may be the same for ISPs. In Germany former monopolist is obliged to provide last mile to the competitors for a limited price. This made the market really competitive and surprisingly some people (quite high in numbers actually) chose to go back after tasting what the competition has in store. Of course DT (Deutsche Telekom) would not lower the prices or work on quality and customer service if it was not forced to. Hence the regulation was needed and achieved its goal. I laugh every time when I think about my (Internet) experience in UK and read about how fancy the networks are in US.

Could this be that there is a lesson here?

Notes from a small island

[GuyFawkes]

Called the UK.

In some ways I am lucky, I live in the south-west, a city called Exeter, 40 miles from Plymouth and the Mayflower Steps for the yanks. In some ways this is lucky because this region is used to market test many products and technologies before they get a nationwide launch.

In 2001 BT first offered ADSL, it was 128/512 kbit, and used the green alcatel stingray / frog thing.

In 2004 Telewest took over the cable TV/telephone company, and put in the internet as a cable option, I switched.

Today I can get either max 8 mbit adsl over (twisted pair) copper, or max 50 mbit cable over (coax) copper.

Due to traffic shaping and throttling and oversold contention ratios, I can max out the 8 mbit adsl at a rock solid 6 mbit and actually achieve a greater throughput than I can from the theoretically far faster (up to) 20 mbit cable package.

The only other alternative was either ISDN or horrendously expensive leased line, which started at around 30k bucks per annum for 2 mbit.

I spent 5 years up until 2004 trying to convince the cable company to provide internet over their pipes, and quite frankly even though I was talking to senior managers they just didn't "get it".

I have to tell you that nothing has changed, they still don't "get it", "it" being the internet.

They still think in dial up terms of pence per minute, or utility terms of pence per kWh or cubic foot.

Frankly speaking the UK economy is fucked, and none of the politicians get it either, especially not the pirate party, in the run up to the general elections.

What we need is a MASSIVE public works deal, just like the yank New Deal when they built the interstates, and roll out SYMMETRIC cable AND ipv6 to every home, set a target, project to be completed within 3 years.

Since we are starting today we need to future proof, so it has to be gigabit each way.

It has to be fibre / laser, not anything on copper, or anything wireless.

It will have the same effect as the building of the interstates, it will open and enable markets that previously did not exist.

Even allowing for overspends, it would come in at less than 50 billion UK pounds, and that spread over 3 years.

All slashdotters, ask yourself this, can you see any opportunities for yourself, and your company, if you were told this was being rolled out in your area? project starting in 4 months and completed in 40?

gigabit up/down and ipv6, does this enable anything you can't do now? things that will generate revenue and stimulate the economy? things that will have a benefit for society that can't just be measured in dollars and cents?

discuss.

And this will change anything .... HOW?

[luckytroll]

Great, now the ISPs will have even higher speeds to lie to us about in their advertising.

Seriously. All this means is that we will hit our caps faster, and/or will feel the throttling more painfully.

When you are being throttled to 25Kb/s, it dosen't matter how fast your last mile can go - It becomes all about
making long-haul ISP links cheap as dirt so the ISP dosent feel a need to throttle their oversubscribed backhaul link to the 'net.